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Now More than Ever!

Sometimes it seems that the world has gone mad. Old battles, I thought won, reappear; and old enmities, I thought if not forgotten at least resolved, fester anew. We work passionately for peace, for the environment, to advance science and create a cleaner and fairer world for more and more people—and yet, we see that there are no final victories. The chaos is strong while order is quite fragile.

The old Cold War heats up and our former enemy, then quasi-ally, Russia, challenges our assumptions, crosses one border and threatens other countries—under the old pretext (which we should recognize because we used it) of protecting “lives and property” of fellow Russians. Iraq, never close to a democracy, has fallen into tribal, ethnic and religious chaos, with more people being killed now than in Saddam’s time. Afghanistan is a mess of warring tribes and ethnicities. Syria is bound in a fratricidal frenzy between brothers who do not recognize each other as brothers.

Asia is simmering with old feuds, and Americans don’t understand the history of animus between Japan and both China and Korea (North & South). The fight over two pieces of rock in the ocean is not about oil or gas but the long memories of Japanese atrocities before and during WWII. When Japan’s Prime Minister Shinzo Abe visits a Shinto shrine commemorating war criminals and moves to revisit Japan’s apology for the sexual enslavement of women in nations they conquered, the Asian mainland is upset and fears Japanese nationalism, re-arming and their nuclear capabilities.

Meanwhile, China supports the west against Russia. They will not endorse different ethnicities having the right to separate or have plebiscites, real or fake, that legitimize separation. The last thing they want is an example to the people of Tibet or the Muslim Uighur minority in their west.

Meanwhile at home, Darwin is once again under fire by people who are themselves the greatest argument that we have not evolved. Science is “only theories.” The earth is 6,000 years old, and women can’t be trusted with control of their own bodies. Not only is abortion under attack but birth control?! Climate change is deniable, and we deport people we actually need to do work we don’t want to do. And far too many people who are all for family values fiercely fight to break up the families and send parents back where they came from and keep their American-born children. Or even worse, deport children who came here before the age of consent and were raised here to countries they have never known,

There is just so much madness that one couldn’t be blamed for wanting to give up and fall into depressive apathy. Action seems, at times, too futile to bother with. You can’t be blamed for the feeling but inaction would be wrong. Now, more than ever, we need each other. We need people of good will from different religions, ethnicities and political persuasions to come together and align when we can find some agreement on the important issues before us. Now more than ever, we need communities of faith and secular groups to join forces to engage our wonderful, beautiful and fractured world.

We will not agree on everything. We may need to ally on one issue with good folks who completely oppose us on other issues. We need to reach across fissures and not allow them to become chasm that separate us, isolate us and therefore render us powerless.

Not only a dilemma, but a solution as well. Bravo! Does this world remind you of the Kingston Trio and their refrain “and I don’t like anybody very much”

Don Spencer

You are clearly a man of verbal talent. The world has many
divisions that you described well, “… we need to join hands and hearts to heal
our broken world.”

Now, use the brain to take the next logical step – we need
to APPROPRIATELY join hands and hearts to heal our broken world. It is the
brain and not “feelings” that will instruct us as to what “appropriate”
means. The premises on which our brains select appropriate conclusions must be based in a truthful analysis of events. A truthful mind will not suggest an
equivalence between Russia’s excuse to invade a country with “we used it”, when our history is solid with the intent to expand and protect the process where “the running argument” can flourish rather than be snuffed out. A truthful mind does not frame the abortion issue narrowly as “women can’t be trusted with control of their own bodies”. Even a secularist can understand that there is a probable point during gestation where it is in society’s benefit to protect the new
human life. A truthful mind does not frame the complexities of illegal immigration and deportation as arising out of a “need” by which we get workers to do “work we don’t want to do”.